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NBC to Trump: “You’re Fired”

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To say that Donald Trump’s campaign to become the next President of the United States is off to a rough start is something of a dramatic understatement. In the same speech where he announced that he was seeking the Republican nomination for the 2016 Presidential campaign, he managed to lose not one but two different high profile jobs by making a series of racist comments towards Mexican immigrants.

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Addressing the subject of illegal immigration and border control is, for a politician, nothing notable. Many people gear their entire campaign around these and similar types of issues. The way that Trump handled his opinions, however, left something to be desired. He not only referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals in a sweeping, blanket statement, but he also indicated that he had reason to believe that the majority of them were rapists as well. Needless to say, his comments did not go over well with just about anybody.

The first and most immediate backlash to his comments came just hours later, when Univision announced that it would no longer be associated with the Miss USA and Miss Universe beauty pageants that Trump is an integral part of. When the controversy failed to die down a few days later, television network NBC also confirmed that it would be cutting all ties to Donald Trump due to the statements that he made. Though the network will be keeping the hit reality television program “The Apprentice” on the air, Trump will no longer be the host – a position that he has filled since the show’s inception.

Part of the reason why these two networks have had such a negative reaction towards Trump has to do with his failure to walk back the statements that he made during his speech. When given the opportunity to explain himself and perhaps shed a bit more light on the comments that he made, he doubled down on his opinion that Mexican immigrants in particular are a problem that the United States needs to address as quickly as possible.

In classic Donald Trump fashion, however, he is not taking this issue in stride. Trump immediately issued a statement indicating that it was he, not NBC, that ended their business relationship. Trump claims that NBC was against his decision to run for President from the beginning because they would have rather he host “The Celebrity Apprentice” instead. Trump then took NBC to task for the network’s received failure to recognize the “serious illegal immigration problem” in the United States.

Trump has also taken the measure of suing NBC for hundreds of millions of dollars for, in part, a breach of his contract and what he perceives to be an attempt to stifle his First Amendment rights. It remains to be seen exactly how the lawsuit will play out as it was only filed in the last few days. It is also unclear exactly how this controversy will harm his chance of receiving the Republican party nomination in time for the 2016 election.